


Hair of the Dog

by TheCaitalloWrites



Series: Monster M*A*S*H [1]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Gen, Supernatural Elements, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:33:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6439471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCaitalloWrites/pseuds/TheCaitalloWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye comes back different from what he hopes is the best R&R he ever forgot. As a result, the 4077th now has something of a werewolf problem. Hilarity ensues?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Try as he might, Hawkeye couldn’t remember much about the previous night. He had been on R&R and had spent the night in or around Tokyo, of that he was relatively certain. And he drank. A lot. Of that he could also be relatively certain.  
  
And at some point, he had been bitten on his left leg by a dog. He didn’t recall it happening, but the bite was there, underneath some bandages he also didn’t remember getting. So, that was one thing he knew had happened, but only because he had evidence.  
Beyond that, he didn’t have a clue, and he could only hope that he had had enough fun to warrant this massive hangover.

The jeep pulled into the 4077th, and he dismounted, wincing slightly as he placed weight on his injured limb. He grabbed his things from the back of the vehicle, and once unloaded, it took off.  
  
Shortly afterwards, BJ approached him. “Hey, Hawkeye,” he greeted, just a bit too loudly for Hawkeye’s currently delicate senses, “How was Tokyo?”  
  
“That’s a good question,” Hawkeye responded, “I’ll get back to you on that if I remember anything about it.”  
  
“Are you telling me you don’t remember anything?” BJ asked. He paused. “And you’re serious?”  
  
Hawkeye nodded. “I’m hoping it was the best night I’ve ever forgotten, although I have my doubts.”  
  
Noticing the slight limp in his gait, BJ asked him, “What happened to your leg?” After a second’s pause, he added, “I’m assuming you can at least tell me that.”  
  
“Well, I don’t know the story behind it, but I must’ve been bitten by a dog,” Hawkeye answered.  
  
“But you don’t remember it happening, or I’m guessing anything afterward,” BJ responded. He studied Hawkeye with some concern.  
  
“It’ll be fine, Beej,” Hawkeye said dismissively, “And if I become rabid, I promise not to bite you.”  
  
“Very funny, but somehow I’m not comforted by that promise,” BJ said, “for all we know you becoming rabid is a distinct possibility. Do you know if you were given a vaccine?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything, except I was bitten, and someone bandaged it. For all I know, I could’ve done it myself,” Hawkeye answered, trying to recall any relevant details but failing.  
  
“Well, c’mon, let’s get your stuff back to the Swamp, and then we need to take a look at that bite and see about getting you a shot,” BJ said.  
  
“Alright, but who’s buying?” Hawkeye replied, as he followed his friend back to their tent.

  


It was oddly comforting to be back in the Swamp. It might have been a hellhole within a larger, more hellish hellhole, but it was the closest thing to a home he had in this place. Even if Charles insisted on playing those damned records of his at such an objectionable volume.  
  
The music seemed louder than usual, but maybe it just seemed that way because every note pounded into Hawkeye’s sore head. Charles gave him a brief cursory glance and an equally brief greeting, “Pierce.”  
  
“Charles,” Hawkeye said, returning the acknowledgement in kind. In a way, he appreciated Charles’s detached air at the moment. It saved him the trouble of having to come up with answers he didn’t have. Charles didn’t care what he’d been up to or if he was potentially rabid, and Hawkeye was strangely grateful for his disinterest.

  


As much as Hawkeye would’ve prefered to stay in the Swamp for a while and attempt to recover from whatever debauchery he’d done the previous night, BJ was insistent that they go tend to his injury and he was admittedly probably right to be, so they headed in the direction of the medical facilities. On their way, they ran into Radar.  
  
“Hey, BJ. Hey, Hawkeye,” the company clerk greeted them. To Hawkeye, he asked, “How was Tokyo?”  
  
“How should I know?” Hawkeye responded flippantly.  
  
“Isn’t that where you just came back from?” Radar asked, slightly confused.  
  
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I know how it was,” Hawkeye answered.  
  
“He says he can’t remember anything from last night,” BJ explained.  
  
“Aw geez,” Radar responded, “Well, did you at least have a good time?”  
  
Rather than point out the obvious flaw in the question, Hawkeye simply said, “I sure hope so.”  
  
As they began to go their separate ways, Radar stopped them again, “Gee, Hawkeye, what happened to your leg?”  
  
“Oh, this? It’s nothing. You should see the other guy.”  
  
Strangely enough, Radar seemed satisfied with this non-explanation. Either that or he figured he didn’t have the time for a real one. He went on his way and left Hawkeye and BJ to return to their business.

  


“Either someone else bandaged this or the quality of my drunken handiwork is slipping,” Hawkeye noted as he removed the covering of his wound, wincing as he came into contact with certain areas.  
  
“Maybe the dog did it,” BJ replied, “it was really the least he could do after biting you.”  
  
“I think the least he could’ve done was not biting me in the first place,” Hawkeye said, inspecting the bite, “Jesus! What kind of dog was it?”  
  
It was a big, nasty bite. Whatever variety of canine had attacked him was evidently very large and vicious. Really, it probably could have been a lot worse; if it hadn’t apparently stopped when and where it did, Hawkeye might not have had to worry about becoming rabid or anything else for that matter.  
  
“Well, whatever it was it must not have been very memorable,” BJ said mildly. He paused briefly and then continued, “This looks fairly clean but we should probably go ahead and clean it again, and it looks like you’ll need stitches there. First things first though we need to vaccinate you.”  
  
“Hey, who said anything about vaccination? I thought we were getting shots.” It was admittedly a weak joke, probably deserving of the complete lack of attention BJ paid it as he left to go get all the necessary supplies.  
  
After hopefully preventing the development of rabies and cleaning, stitching, and re-bandaging Hawkeye’s wound, the two of them headed back to the Swamp. With any luck, the rest of the afternoon and the following evening would be uneventful.

  


The weird hypersensitivity he had been experiencing didn’t end when the hangover ended, as Hawkeye found out early the next morning. It was barely sunrise when he awoke to the sound of choppers approaching. He looked around to find Charles and BJ were still sound asleep.  
  
“Guys, wake up! Don’t you hear that?” He shook them both awake. “C’mon, we’ve got incoming wounded. Don’t you hear those choppers?”  
  
“Hawk, you’re dreaming,” BJ said, still groggy, “Go back to sleep.”  
  
“No, I’m serious! Listen!” Hawkeye argued.  
  
The three of them were quiet for a moment. Finally, Charles said, “Hunnicutt, I believe he may be right. I believe I, too, can hear them, distant though they may be.”  
  
“Distant? C’mon, they may not be right on us, but they’re close,” Hawkeye responded, incredulously, “I’m surprised they haven’t said anything over—”  
  
Before he could continue, a voice over the PA cut him off, “Attention, all personnel! Incoming wounded!”  
  
Any doubts the three doctors might have had were immediately cast away by that voice and they sprang immediately into action, heading towards the OR.  
  
Once the wounded arrived, things got even weirder. Namely, the smells were much stronger than usual, to such an extent that Hawkeye could smell things he never even realized had scents before. He wasn’t sure why he’d notice the scents now and never before, nor was he sure why they’d be so much more overwhelmingly intense at the moment, but he didn’t have time to contemplate why. All he knew was that it was happening, and he’d have to work in spite of it.  
  
It made it hard to concentrate though, like the worst kind of sensory overload. Still, he tried his best to shake it off and work through it because he had to.  
  
The smell of sweat hung in the air of the OR, the sweat of patients, the sweat of nurses, the sweat of doctors. Hawkeye was surprised to find that at times he could tell the smell of one person from another, although for the most part they all just blended together.  
  
The scent of the blood was nearly overwhelming, and he hated that he was so intensely aware of it. The smell of it had never been so strong before, even though it was routinely all over him and everyone around him. He hoped he could forget it; he wished he could get it out of his head.  
  
But that wasn’t actually the worst one. There was something else, something Hawkeye couldn’t quite place. It had a sour note to it, and it caused an anxious feeling in his guts when he breathed it in. He could feel it, too, in some indescribable and intangible way. It was like it came with its own energy. It hung in the air of the place, as though everyone in the room and surrounding area was breathing it in and out just as he was.  
  
It was… fear. The realization froze him for a second. He could _smell_ fear, and he could feel it, not just his own fear—no this was different; it was _everyone’s_. He felt the fear of everyone else in the room, maybe not to the extent they felt it, but he still could feel it.  
  
What was going on? Was he losing his mind? Was this some sort of delusion?  
  
Some sort of bizarre olfactory hallucination?  
  
He couldn’t crack up now; there were lives on the line. He’d just have to deal with whatever this was later. He shook it off as best as he could, and he kept working.

  


Later that day, long after the nightmare that was triage and the OR, the strangeness continued. Everywhere Hawkeye went there were so many smells, much like when the wounded came in only these were more mundane, less hellish scents. He was even getting pretty good at matching certain scents to certain people as the afternoon progressed. The fact that this was a very odd (and not to mention very dog-like) thing to do was not lost on him, but he really didn’t know what to make of it, nor was it something he knew how to stop. It wasn’t really anything that he did consciously or that he could control. That he should be experiencing any of this after apparently being bitten by a dog was either an extreme coincidence or perhaps something psychosomatic in nature. It was hard to say which.  
  
He thought about all of this as he changed the bandaging on his wound. He inspected the injury, flinching as he touched certain areas. It still looked pretty grisly, but the wound seemed to be healing fine. There were no signs of infection so far. It still hurt, but it wasn’t at all unbearable. Really aside from the probably unrelated other weird stuff he’d been experiencing, he felt perfectly fine.  
  
Someone was approaching him from behind, and judging by the scent, it was BJ. “So, how’s the leg?” he asked. Hawkeye wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he’d just correctly identified his best friend by smell alone, but apparently that was a thing he could do now regardless of what he thought of it.  
  
“It’s okay,” Hawkeye replied, somewhat distracted. He could practically feel his friend studying him.  
  
“What about you?” BJ asked.  
  
“What about me?” Hawkeye countered in a mild but uneasy tone, feeling strangely defensive under the probably well-intentioned scrutiny.  
  
“Are you okay? You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet all day,” BJ responded.  
  
He supposed he was okay; whatever this was that was going on with him didn’t seem at all harmful. Unless this was the symptom of some larger health concern, probably one that was psychological in nature. “‘Uncharacteristically quiet’? I can be quiet when I want to be.” He seldom wanted to be, but that went without saying.  
  
BJ still said it, of course. “I’ve never known you to want to,” he quipped.  
  
“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Hawkeye said. After a beat, he added, “I’m alright though, really.”  
  
“Alright,” BJ said, “If you say so. I’m thinking about grabbing a few drinks. Do you wanna join me?”  
  
He should probably have said no, given the criminal amount he had recently consumed, but he found the opportunity to dull his senses even more appealing than usual and that was truly saying something. “Yeah, sure. I think I’ve given my liver enough time to recover from whatever happened in Tokyo.”  
  
Alcohol had gotten him into whatever this mess was, so the least it could do was get him out of it, even if only temporarily or partially.


	2. Chapter 2

Radar had had a feeling when he first saw Hawkeye the other day when the other man had returned from R&R. It was a pretty strong feeling that there was something different with Hawkeye and that someone really needed to keep an eye on him. Generally, Radar listened to these kinds of feelings, so he’d been watching Hawkeye pretty closely ever since.  
  
Hawkeye had said he didn’t remember what happened to him during most of his trip, which was maybe a little unusual but certainly not out of the question, after all the captain drank a lot. He’d been bitten by something that he didn’t remember being bitten by or what it was and he was assuming was a dog, and he didn’t actually tell Radar any of that, but sometimes Radar could hear or would just sorta know the stuff that people didn’t actually say out loud. Ever since then, though, it seemed like Hawkeye was different.  
  
Sometimes now Radar would notice thoughts from Hawkeye that were weird or didn’t really make much sense to him, and usually he noticed that Hawkeye would notice them, too. Sometimes, more and more often as the days went by, Hawkeye would think or do something that reminded Radar of an animal; sometimes he’d notice a thought or feeling from Hawkeye that was just like an animal.  
  
A canine animal to be more exact, which was funny seeing as he’d been bitten by something he assumed was a dog…  
  
Hawkeye was a wolfman! Were wolfmen real? They could be, couldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they be? Really, there were probably weirder things that were real. He was real after all, with all his seeing and hearing and knowing things, and Henry Blake had been real and he’d been magic, like honest to God magic, not magic tricks magic. (Not that anybody else besides Radar knew and not that Henry had told him, Radar just knew and, of course, he didn’t let on that he knew anything.) But anyway, if they were real, then who was to say wolfmen weren’t real?  
  
Radar wasn’t entirely sure, but the very idea just made him all the more certain that he needed to keep an eye on his friend.

  


Whatever had happened to Hawkeye in Tokyo several weeks ago was still happening to him. At least, he had to assume all of the strangeness he’d been continuing to experience could be reasonably traced back to that night. Although, regardless, he still didn’t know what to make of it.  
  
He was still getting used to his bizarre heightened senses, particularly the nose, but he was adjusting surprisingly well. He seldom got overwhelmed in triage or OR anymore, and he had gotten pretty good at matching certain people to their scents (for whatever that was worth.) His ears were better than they’d been before as well, which he finally realized the third time he’d anticipated incoming wounded minutes before the others (well, the others excluding Radar, of course. Radar always seemed to know in advance somehow.) After that time, he’d stopped mentioning it when he heard things others didn’t or barely could.  
  
He told no one about any of this. Truthfully, he didn’t know how to. He knew he’d just sound crazy anyway; often, he feared that maybe he was. Especially when he caught himself having strange thoughts and impulses, which seemed to be happening with increasing frequency as the weeks went by. His thoughts didn’t always feel all the way normal, all the way _human._  
  
Most recently, he’d developed a persistent feeling of restlessness, and since its onset it seemed like it only got more intense with each passing day, until it finally came to a head, presently feeling like it was swallowing him up. He was lost in it, a slave to it, and he didn’t know how to get rid of it. No matter how much he ran around, slept around, acted out, paced, pranked, drank, did _anything_ , there was no relief for the strange pent up energy. Finally, it left him in a perpetually manic, hypersensitive state, a constant stirring in his head driving him on, keeping him from staying still or quiet for too long.  
  
He was practically possessed by the bizarre urge to claw his way out of his own skin and run and run and run until he was far away from this stinking hellhole. It wasn’t at all a rational desire, seeing as he couldn’t run all the way home, but still, something inside him was screaming at him to escape. It was an almost primal feeling, and it manifested itself as a near constant itch just beneath his skin and that damn restlessness that he couldn’t shake.  
  
Maybe this waking nightmare called war (or by some “a police action”) _had_ finally cracked him. He had concluded early that morning (or late the previous night, sometimes he didn’t know one from another) while he was surrounded once again by the smell of blood, sweat, fear, and death (a cocktail worse than anything he imagined actual Hell had to offer, that for some reason he was now painfully aware of and couldn’t stop being aware of) that the war literally stunk. Why he had the misfortune of being suddenly able to smell its literal stench he didn’t know.  
  
There were two things that stopped him from giving in to this newly developed nervous condition. One, it was physically impossible to escape the confines of his own skin no matter how much he felt the inexplicable need to. Two, there were too many people counting on him and too many people he cared about and loved here for him to give in to his apparent insanity and abandon them (especially considering he had no idea where the hell he’d end up if he tried to literally run away.) Although, if he were completely honest, it was mostly the physical impossibility that was currently stopping him.  
  
Despite being sleep deprived, he was so desperately restless. Everywhere he went that day, sitting or even standing still was almost impossible. He really was making an effort not to act as erratic and unstable as he felt inside, but all the same he received looks that said he was being odd even by his usual standards. He couldn’t help it; he didn’t know what to do. Furthermore, his impulse control was practically nonexistent in this state. 

  


“How are you not dead on your feet?” BJ asked incredulously at one point, “How are you even _on_ your feet?”  
  
At some point during their conversation, Hawkeye had apparently abandoned what remained of his lunch and stood up, but he hadn’t even noticed he was standing until his friend pointed it out. “I don’t know. I should be tired—I know I should be tired or part of me knows I should be.” His thoughts were racing faster than he knew how to keep up with, and it distracted him for a moment.  
  
“Are you alright?” BJ asked, examining him with as much scrutiny as he seemed able to muster.  
  
“Me? Alright? Yeah, I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be alright? I mean, this morning was hell, and this place is hell, and it _reeks_ like hell. It fucking _reeks_ , literally speaking and figuratively speaking. And we’re all caged in it, and we can’t get out, and if we did where would we go, they won’t let us go home after all. And sometimes I just want to run screaming into the night, but it’s midday and where would I go if I did, and I can’t just leave all my friends here stuck in this hell without me.” He thought he heard BJ gently say his name, but another train of thought joined this one and he couldn’t get off the tracks.  
  
“And if I ever found the men in charge of keeping us here and sending us more and more bodies to patch up so they can keep on keeping us here, I’d—” _Fuck_. He literally bit his tongue to stop himself from the string of violent speech and obscenities that rushed into his head and didn’t feel entirely like they’d come from him, but instead were yet another of those animalistic impulses that he’d been having.  
  
Because he’d almost said a lot of really scary, definitely not “alright” things. Before he bit his tongue so hard he tasted his own blood, he’d very nearly said that if he ever encountered the men in charge of this damn war he’d taste their blood. He couldn’t shake the idea of sinking his teeth into their flesh and tearing it open, even though it made no sense; human teeth couldn’t do what he imagined doing, a human jaw didn’t even work that way. He’d fucking maul them one way or another, maybe even kill them, and he wouldn’t even feel remorse. Because after all, what caged animal ever feels remorse at biting back at those that torment them and their family? They’d hurt him and his pack and so many others, and the animal just under his skin wanted them to pay.  
  
Rage was not completely foreign to Hawkeye; Korea had given him more anger than he’d previously known in his life on several occasions. But _this_ , this was horrifying. Hawkeye was generally a pacifist, and he seldom ever felt inclined to physical violence, and now some part of him was telling him to viciously attack, maybe even murder, and that it would be right to do so.  
  
He forced himself to sit down. He didn’t look at BJ, but he could feel the other man’s stare. “Okay,” he conceded, “Maybe I’m not alright, but let’s just keep that between you and me and whoever just happened to witness my almost making a scene just then.” Sitting still, remaining in the mess tent, trying to force himself to be quiet lest he say something truly insane was excruciating.  
  
“Maybe I am just tired. I’m just the kind of tired that’s too tired to rest, too tired to know how tired I am. Can someone get so tired it goes around and circles back into un-tired territory? Because part of me wants to rest and part of me just wants to take a long walk and keep going until I forget myself or collapse, whichever comes first—”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, Hawk, slow down,” BJ said sternly, and Hawkeye suddenly realized that BJ had uttered those exact words earlier during his previous rant but in a gentler tone that had evidently not fully reached Hawkeye the way BJ’s current tone did.  
  
Hawkeye looked at his friend sheepishly. For just a moment, he felt brought back to himself enough to realize he’d gone off once again, and now he felt oddly exposed, self-conscious, and ashamed, which were all feelings he wasn’t really used to having. God, why was it so hard to just _stop_?  
  
“You’re going a mile a minute—no, scratch that you’re going a _hundred_ miles a minute. What’s going on with you? Are you on something?” BJ continued.  
  
“I’m—I don’t know what I am,” Hawkeye confessed, “I’m probably just tired, really.” He wanted so much to believe that’s all it was, but he really didn’t believe that was it at all. He forced his words to go a bit slower as he spoke as best as he could. He didn’t want to trouble his friend with whatever this was, and even the weird animal voice (if it could be called a “voice” when it had no actual voice) in his head agreed with him on that. “I can’t even remember the last time I slept for more than three hours. Hell, I don’t know if I’ve slept _that_ much in the past two days.”  
  
This was true. There had been a lot of wounded in the last day or so, and that coupled with whatever sort of breakdown he was apparently having had meant little sleep for Hawkeye. So, he wasn’t really lying, just leaving out a few details.  
  
“I’m gonna go for a walk and see if I can’t wear off whatever kind of second or tenth wind this is so I can maybe get some actual rest,” Hawkeye said, allowing himself to stand once more. Part of him really wanted BJ to join him, but he knew his friend was exhausted and that it was probably better that he tried to keep to himself until whatever state he was in passed. Unfortunately, this state came with impulses that told him he really didn’t want to be alone, but he’d just have to try to ignore those and all the other unwanted thoughts and urges as well.

  


Hawkeye paced the floor of the swamp, despite the stares he drew from his bunkmates. He briefly entertained the idea of going for a walk, but he had done that already, and it was going to be dark soon. No, it was probably better to try to stay put, stay here with his pack...Pack? Friends, his friends, even if they were judging him harshly and worrying over him in ways he didn’t care for.  
  
He had hoped at some point he would stop feeling these wild, unstable, and abnormal sensations, even if it only stopped due to exhaustion, but presently the sun was about to set and if anything, the feelings were worse than ever. He was almost like a caged animal, like a wild animal trapped inside a human body. He had no idea why he felt that way, but as the day passed he had found his drive to question it had diminished.  
  
“Hawk, c’mon, you’re wearing me out just watching you,” BJ said, his voice bringing Hawkeye back to reality for a moment. “Why don’t you just sit down and have a drink or something?”  
  
Drinking! Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of that? Probably because he’d been having trouble thinking clearly or because wild animals didn’t drink or because drinking meant stopping and he hadn’t been doing much of that today. Drinking could solve everything though, couldn’t it? He could get so drunk he forgot to feel crazy, so drunk he could stop moving, so drunk he could pass out for a while.  
  
“Good thinkin’, Beej,” he replied, heading towards the still, “Now, why the hell didn’t I think of that? I must really be losing it.” He hadn’t really meant to say that last statement out loud, but his impulse control was currently out the window.  
  
He couldn’t wait to numb all the crawling his skin was doing at the moment. Idly, he scratched at one of his arms, pausing in front of the still. The unsettling sensation was only getting worse, so he quickly poured a glass of gin and tried to ignore it.  
  
He shuddered. For the first time since all his insanity started, it felt like there might actually be something physically wrong with him. He spilled his drink as he began to shake uncontrollably.  
  
“Hawk, you alright?” BJ asked with concern.  
  
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye answered honestly, “I don’t know what’s going on. I—” Various muscles throughout his body convulsed, and he fell to the ground with a pained noise.  
  
“Hawk!” BJ cried and went immediately down on the ground beside him.  
  
“Pierce?!” Charles followed suit. To BJ, he said, “it appears as though he’s having some sort of fit.”  
  
A fit was putting it lightly. He had almost totally lost control of his body, and it felt like every muscle he had kept spasming. Mentally speaking, he was still all there but barely.  
  
Charles and BJ were trying to hold him down, presumably to keep him from harming himself accidentally, and probably also so they could check him over. He didn’t like it though. He didn’t want to be held down. He didn’t like the feeling of being restrained. He struggled against them as best as he could.  
  
“Hawkeye, are you conscious? Can you talk to us?” BJ asked him.  
  
He was, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t find the words. He was usually full of words...but now they were...his thoughts were becoming simpler. “Beej,” he managed. He struggled with the rest.  
  
“Hawk?”  
  
“Whatever this episode is, if it does not end soon, we may need to sedate him,” Charles said, “Do you have any idea what might have brought this on?”  
  
“No idea,” BJ said, “We’ll probably have to do some blood work, especially if we can’t get him to come to and talk to us.” He tried addressing Hawkeye again, “Hawk? Hawkeye?”  
  
Their conversation was becoming harder to follow, but Hawkeye soon heard them shouting. When he could see the two of them for all his moving about (and when his eyes weren’t tightly shut from the discomfort of whatever was going on with him), he could see horrified and confused expressions.  
  
“Hawk?!”  
  
“What on Earth?!”  
  
His face felt wrong somehow, as did his teeth. He cried out, but the sound changed to something not quite human sounding. His clothing didn’t quite fit in several places all of a sudden, mostly they hung on him and caught him in a disorienting trap of fabric.  
  
“What the hell?!”  
  
“What is the meaning of this?! How is this possible?!”  
  
“Forget the why and how, _what_ is happening?!”  
  
Trapped. Restrained. Frightened. He needed to escape, but he couldn’t. He thrashed about, but strong arms still held him. _Fight then flee._ He attacked. The arms released him, and he was free once he finished wriggling out of the last of the cloth.  
  
_Run. Run. Run. Run._ He dashed out of the tent, and he did not stop until he was far away from the camp.

 

Charles cried out in pain and immediately withdrew from— well, whatever it was that had replaced Hawkeye— and BJ rapidly followed suit to avoid the same fate. For a moment, BJ just stood in place, overwhelmed and hopelessly confused; he didn’t know whether to worry about the black canine beast that had somehow taken Hawkeye’s place (or that Hawkeye had somehow turned into or whatever the hell had just happened) or Charles who had just been bitten by Hawkeye or whatever Hawkeye had become or been replaced by.  
  
Or had any of that even just happened at all? It made no sense and was impossible. He would surely wake up soon, and he wasn’t sure if he’d tell the others about this dream or not.  
  
Then, the gravity (if not the reality) of the situation hit him. Charles was hurt and was bleeding quite a bit. They would have to worry about Hawkeye and the beast that somehow might have been Hawkeye and what was real and what wasn’t later.  
  
No, what they needed to worry about now was getting Charles fixed up and figuring out how the hell they were going to explain what had just happened to anyone else.


	3. Chapter 3

For the second time in recent history, Hawkeye awoke uncertain of his surroundings or the events of the previous night that led him to them. This time was much worse though (which was saying something considering last time he’d been mysteriously injured.) He was lying on the ground outside, and a quick survey of the area told him he had no idea where he was.  
  
Also, he was naked. Did he even wanna know why that was? He was naked in the middle of nowhere with no idea how he’d gotten there.  
  
And...was that—? Blood. There was blood on him. What the hell had he done? He inspected himself briefly. It wasn’t his blood. Maybe it wasn’t even human; it smelled different from the blood in the OR.  
  
Aha! He found a feather, probably from a chicken by the looks of it, although he was no expert on birds.  
  
So, he’d probably harmed at least one chicken at some point. And clothing had apparently been optional during these wild escapades.  
  
He didn’t feel at all hungover, so he hadn’t been drinking. His brow furrowed. That wasn’t at all reassuring. No, that wasn’t good at all. If he was blacking out and doing crazy stuff when he was apparently sober then there was a pretty good chance he had really gone off the deep end.  
  
He shook his head. That didn’t matter right now. Right now, he needed to focus on getting back to camp...somehow. He looked all around himself. He was truly in the middle of fucking nowhere. Great.  
  
There had to be some sort of way to retrace his steps. He studied the area more closely. He briefly entertained the idea of crying out in the probably vain hopes he was closer to camp than he thought or that one of his friends might otherwise hear him, but he thought better of it, lest his voice fall on more sinister ears.  
  
Cautiously, he headed towards some brush that appeared to have been recently trampled. He sniffed the air as he went, since apparently his sense of smell was almost as good as his eyes now. He thought he detected faint hints of whatever animal’s blood was all over him, but it was hard to tell with the blood still on him. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.  
  
He could only hope he was headed in the right direction. He wondered with some concern how far he would have to walk even if he was going in the right direction. He couldn’t have travelled too far last night, could he have? Had he made it all the way to wherever he had ended up on foot? He hoped so.  
  
After a little while, he happened upon a small farm. Signs of life, that was probably a good sign. Something told him to stay hidden though. Probably had something to do with that chicken he might’ve murdered, he noted slightly amused in spite of himself. He continued travelling, staying hidden in the brush and tall grass as best as he could.  
  
By the time he’d managed to sneak all the way around the farm, the sun was high in the sky. He had fewer clues to go by now in terms of which way he needed to go. He looked around, sniffed around, but neither sense told him much. He was almost as lost as he had been when he had started.  
  
He couldn’t stay out here alone like this; he had to find his way back somehow. Think. Think. Think. He had to try to remember the previous night, but it was all a confusing blur.  
  
He had run away from the 4077th and had kept running and running. He remembered that, but in a funny sort of way. Almost like remembering a dream. Before that, there had been something wrong… Something had been wrong with him, and BJ and Charles couldn’t figure it out and had been shouting. They had been afraid, and he had been afraid. Then, he ran. Then…  
  
He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. Try as he might, he just couldn’t.  
  
Suddenly, his nose detected something that broke his concentration. He thought he caught the faintest scent of some of his friends on the breeze, like they were distant but somewhere he might be able to find them. He followed the faint trace now; it was all he really had.  
  
As weird as it was to suddenly be able to identify and track people by sense of smell, the ability was proving extremely useful in this situation. The scents, that he had determined belonged to Colonel Potter and Radar, were getting stronger as he moved forward. He probably should have been more concerned about his appearance and current state of undress, but he was much too concerned with no longer being alone and lost to give that much consideration.  
  
Finally, when the scent was at its strongest, Hawkeye could hear voices to go with it. He practically ran towards them until at last the two men were in sight.  
  
“Colonel Potter! Radar! Boy, am I glad to see you guys!” He shouted as he approached them.  
  
“The feeling is mutual, son. You gave us all quite the scare,” Potter said.  
  
“Oh geez! He’s naked!” Radar exclaimed in lieu of a greeting, “And he’s got blood all over ‘im! What the heck did you do, Hawkeye?” The young man sounded utterly appalled.  
  
“That’s a good question actually,” Hawkeye replied, while making a feeble attempt to cover himself, “One I’m not so sure I have an answer to, other than the possibility that I might have seriously harmed at least one chicken at some point.”  
  
“You did what?!” Radar, animal lover that he was, managed to sound even more appalled than before.  
  
“I _might_ have,” Hawkeye said, “I don’t know.” He paused, wishing yet again that he had more clear memories of the previous night. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what the hell happened last night.”  
  
“Well, put these on,” Potter ordered handing him some clothes, “We can talk more on the way back.”  
  
  
After a short walk, they reached the dirt road where Potter and Radar had apparently left a jeep. The three of them boarded it, and Potter asked Hawkeye, “So, what all do you remember about last night?” His tone was knowing, and it also held an implication that he was going somewhere specific with this line of questioning.  
  
“Honestly, Colonel? Not much,” Hawkeye replied, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into it any further than that.  
  
The Colonel, on the other hand, must have. “Tell me what you remember, all of it, even if it sounds kooky.”  
  
Hawkeye looked at him skeptically, but he complied. “‘Kooky’, huh? I think I’ve got that covered.” He paused, considering the question and both events he could recall and the possible ones he couldn’t. “Well, I was in the Swamp, last thing I clearly recall. There was… I don’t know what had come over me, but there was this feeling that I couldn’t shake. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it made me wanna get real far away from the Swamp, like I was trapped. I’ve never felt quite like that in the Swamp before, usually there’s plenty of space for me to breathe in there, relatively speaking at least.”  
  
“And then what happened?” The Colonel pressed on when Hawkeye paused.  
  
“Well, I don’t know exactly,” Hawkeye answered, “I remember something was wrong with me. I was shaking, and I think I had some sort of fit or seizure or something. It-It gets blurrier from there really. I-I remember, I think, BJ and Charles were trying to help me, but I don’t think they knew what was going on anymore than I did.”  
  
“Well, they musta done something to upset you ‘cause you bit Major Winchester,” Radar interjected.  
  
“I did what?” Hawkeye asked. It might’ve been funny if he wasn’t so confused.  
  
“Radar, that’s enough. We’ll get to Major Winchester’s part in all this fracas in a minute,” Potter said, sternly but not harshly. Returning his attentions to Hawkeye, he said, “What do you remember after the whole affair with Winchester and Hunnicutt?”  
  
“Well, clearly not enough,” Hawkeye responded, “I just, sort of, remember… running. Running out of the Swamp, then out of the camp, and then I guess I just kept going until I was in the middle of nowhere, presumably making at least one stop along the way to grab a chicken or two.” The Colonel was right; it did sound “kooky”.  
  
Even though being crazy did sometimes get people out of the Army, Hawkeye found himself incredibly anxious at the thought of the Colonel (or anyone else really) thinking he was nuts. He found himself even more anxious at the idea that he genuinely might be nuts. “Sorry, Colonel, that’s all I know, and I’m not sure what to make of it or how to explain any of it.” Aside from the obvious explanation that he had lost it, of course, but he kept that to himself, figuring that maybe it went without saying.  
  
“Well, I do!” Radar interjected once more, “Hawkeye’s a wolfman!”  
  
Suddenly, Hawkeye didn’t feel like the craziest guy in the jeep. “A wolfman?”  
  
“Radar—” The Colonel began.  
  
“I know it sounds crazy, sirs, but how else do you explain everything? He came back from Tokyo different, and he even got bit when he was there, and he’s been acting all funny lately, and last night when he bit Major Winchester and took off was a full moon!” More quietly, he added, “Oh geez, I guess that means the Major’s a wolfman now, too.”  
  
Hawkeye had to admit Radar’s explanation made a ridiculous kind of sense; it was really uncanny how much the situation resembled the story Radar was telling. Still, it was just that— a story. He couldn’t help but laugh. “C’mon, Radar? _The Wolfman_?” He didn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings, but it was just too funny.  
  
“He’s right, son, _The Wolfman_ ’s just a story,” Potter said, “What we’ve got here is a genuine, bona fide, _real life_ werewolf.”  
  
Both Hawkeye and Radar stared at Potter in shock. Hawkeye couldn’t believe he’d really heard what he’d just heard. “A _what?_ ”  
  
“You heard me, son,” Potter replied, “You’re a werewolf.”  
  
Great. Everybody in this jeep was nuts. “Colonel, you can’t be serious,” Hawkeye responded, “Come on, this… this is a joke. You’re- You’re messing with me right now, aren’t you? Who put you up to this? BJ?”  
  
“I certainly didn’t drop you off in the middle of the Korean wilderness, and neither did Captain Hunnicutt,” Potter said.  
  
“Well, no, but—C’mon! Werewolf?! You have to be kidding me,” Hawkeye continued.  
  
“‘Fraid I’m not,” Potter replied, “I’ve been around awhile, and I’ve seen a lot, and I believe I know a werewolf when I see one. Radar was right in his own way; you came back from Tokyo different, but I wasn’t completely sure about it until last night.”  
  
Potter was serious. Potter was dead serious and talking about werewolves. Good old rational, down to Earth Colonel Potter was trying to seriously convince him that he was a werewolf. For the first time in a while, Hawkeye didn’t feel like he was going crazy; rather, he felt like the whole rest of the world was going crazy. It was enough to make his head spin.  
  
“You think I’ve gone crackers, don’t you?” The Colonel asked him, “It’s alright. I would, too, if I were you, but I can assure you I haven’t. I even served with a few werewolves back in WW Two, if you can believe it.”  
  
“With all due respect, Colonel, I can’t believe any of this,” Hawkeye responded. He looked down at his bloodstained hands and wondered if it would be worse to be insane or to be a “bona fide, real life” werewolf.


	4. Chapter 4

Either word hadn’t gotten around about Hawkeye’s escapades and disappearance or Potter had told everybody not to make a scene when they returned because there were surprisingly few people greeting them when they drove into the camp.  
  
First, there was BJ, who seemed happy and relieved to see Hawkeye, and then worried about him all over again when he took in Hawkeye’s appearance. Hawkeye simply told him they’d talk about it later; he wasn’t up for more talk about last night or any of this mess, not until he’d had a chance to get cleaned up and clear his head a bit (if that were even possible anymore.)  
  
Then, there was Klinger, who commended him on an excellent ruse and expressed his regrets that he had never thought of anything like it himself. Hawkeye started to explain that it wasn’t a scam, but he gave up before he even began.  
  
Still, Klinger reached the conclusion himself as he took in Hawkeye’s demeanor and appearance. “Why, it’s almost as if you’re actually crazy,” Klinger said finally, his voice losing its previous enthusiasm.  
  
Unable to argue against the claim and lacking the drive to even pretend to try, Hawkeye simply responded, “Seems that way, doesn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah…” Klinger eyed him warily as he walked away.  
  
And then, there was Charles, who was apparently angry with him, and even though Hawkeye wanted to know the full story, assuming it had to do with the blurry and incomplete memories (or lack of memories) of the night before, Hawkeye didn’t feel like dealing with Charles just yet. Although, he couldn’t help but notice before he left Charles behind him that the other man had a bandaged arm.  
  
Radar’s words came back to him. “You bit Major Winchester,” he had said. Surely all that bandaging wasn’t from something Hawkeye had done, was it? That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? If Hawkeye were completely honest, he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t really be sure of anything at the moment except that he needed a shower and a change of clothes.

  


Washing the blood off took several minutes, but once he had done it, Hawkeye instantly felt more human, comparatively speaking at least. Or at least he felt less like the monster Radar had apparently believed him to be. He’d take that for now.  
  
He didn’t even know what to make of what Potter had said about him. It was just so crazy, especially coming from the Colonel of all people.  
  
And yet… the Colonel didn’t seem crazy or senile or anything like that in any other way. He just apparently believed that werewolves were real and that Hawkeye had become one. That whole thing aside, he seemed totally in his right mind and totally his normal self.  
  
It was almost enough to make Hawkeye wonder if maybe there really was something to the old man’s theory. This was especially true in light of all the weird things Hawkeye had experienced lately. If werewolves were real, and that was a big “if”, Hawkeye probably was one. It was as Radar and Potter had both said, he’d come back from Tokyo different. He couldn’t deny that.  
  
Once clean and as clear-headed as he could hope to be for the time being, he was eager (if a little nervous) to hear his bunkmates’ accounts of the previous night, so he headed to The Swamp in hopes that he’d find them there.

  


BJ was in their tent, but Charles was not, which was good because Hawkeye really wanted to talk with BJ alone before talking with Charles (who he knew would almost certainly give him an earful.) He hoped that BJ would have some kind of rational explanation for everything, but at the very least Hawkeye would settle for him not talking about werewolves.  
  
“So, you wanna tell me what happened last night?” BJ asked him not long after he’d entered their quarters.  
  
“Funny, I was gonna ask you the same thing,” Hawkeye replied, “I don’t really remember much, so why don’t you go first.”  
  
“What do you want me to say?” BJ asked. He seemed a little cagey for some reason.  
  
“Anything,” Hawkeye said, “Just tell me your side of things because I might as well know somebody’s. As far as I’m concerned, everything from sunset and on yesterday is either blurry or nonexistent.”  
  
BJ seemed to be considering something for a moment. Finally, he said, “Well, to be perfectly honest, I can’t make heads nor tails of what I saw or what happened.”  
  
What the heck was that supposed to mean? Hawkeye had a sinking feeling he already knew where this was heading. “Okay, so? So, what? You gotta give me something more than that, Beej, and I promise you that whatever you say probably _won’t_ be the craziest thing I’ve heard today.”  
  
“I doubt that very much, but okay,” BJ said, “What’s the last thing you remember? I’ll go from there.”  
  
“It was around sunset. We were all in here, and I don’t know what was wrong but something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t sit still, and I felt like I just needed to get the hell out of here. You told me to start drinking, which was odd because usually no one has to tell me to do that. I don’t think I ever got around to the actual drinking before things got weird… And that’s basically all I remember.”  
  
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, you were driving Charles and me nuts; you were all over the place, even for you. We should’ve known then that something was seriously wrong.” BJ paused. “We still don’t know what happened to you, but you started shaking so much you spilled your gin, and then you hit the floor. You looked like you were having some sort of seizure, but we have no idea what would’ve caused it. Then, um…” He trailed off.  
  
“Yeah?” Hawkeye prodded. “Then what?”  
  
“This… This is all gonna sound insane, and I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t see it, and even still I don’t know what to make of it. I can’t even begin to explain it,” BJ said.  
  
“Damn it, Beej! Tell me!” Hawkeye exclaimed, growing impatient.  
  
“Alright! Alright! Charles and I were looking you over and restraining you—” Yes, he remembered that now, in a way. They had held him down, and he hadn’t liked it. “And… it looked liked—there was—well, you looked different a-all of a sudden. There was something wrong with your face and-and the rest of you, a-and you were… screaming, but it wasn’t a scream; it was a sound like-like an animal. A-and then, I don’t know. You were gone, and there was an animal in your place.”  
  
“What kind of animal?” Hawkeye asked, a feeling of dread told him he didn’t even need to ask.  
  
“What do you mean what kind of animal? What does that matter?” BJ asked incredulously.  
  
“It just does, okay? What kind of animal?” Hawkeye responded.  
  
“Well, it was hard to get a good look at it, but from what I could tell, it looked like a wolf,” BJ answered.  
  
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Hawkeye said.  
  
“No, I’m not. Believe me, I wish I were,” BJ said.  
  
This had to be some stupid elaborate prank. It had to be. Well, it wasn’t funny anymore. “I could very well be going out of my head, and I’ve got you and Radar and Potter and who knows who else trying to convince me that I’m a werewolf. Who’s big idea was this?”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Hawk,” BJ responded, “What?” He seemed genuinely confused. Come to think of it, he had seemed genuine when he had told the whole story as well. On the other hand, if this wasn’t a crazy joke, then it was just crazy. “Look,” he continued, “whatever else is going on, I promise you, I’m not fooling around here. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m telling you the truth, or at least the truth as much as I understand it.”  
  
“Alright,” Hawkeye said, “I believe you. I don’t know what any of it means, but I believe you.” After a pause, he added, “Say, just out of curiosity, have you talked to Radar or Potter?”  
  
“About this? Not as much as I should have, I’m guessing,” BJ replied, “but they both found out that _something_ had happened when Charles got bitten. I don’t think either me or Charles did a very good job at explaining what had happened.”  
  
“So, I did bite Charles,” Hawkeye said, more to himself than to his friend.  
  
“Well, _you_ didn’t,” BJ said.  
  
“Right, right,” Hawkeye said, a bit dismissively, “Of course, _I_ didn’t do it; that’d just be crazy, wouldn’t it? It was just the wolf that magically took my place.”  
  
Before BJ could respond, Charles entered the tent, and as soon as he set eyes on the two of them, he started practically frothing at the mouth. “You!” He shouted, pointing at Hawkeye.  
  
“Who me?” Hawkeye returned playfully.  
  
“I don’t know how you and Hunnicutt pulled off that stunt last night, but I’ll have you know—”  
  
“Charles, for the hundredth time, there was _no_ ‘stunt’! C’mon, you were there! You saw that I saw!” BJ interjected.  
  
“I saw what you two degenerates wanted me to see, and how on Earth you managed to smuggle a wild animal into this tent, I’m sure I’ll never know nor do I probably want to know,” Charles replied, seething.  
  
“How’s your arm?” Hawkeye asked, sincerely.  
  
“As if you care,” Charles responded.  
  
“Maybe I do! Look, I don’t even know what happened last night,” Hawkeye began.  
  
“Oh, you don’t, eh?” Charles cut him off, “My, how convenient for you.”  
  
“Look, Charles, if this whole thing was somehow a prank on you, don’t you think I’d remember something about it, like planning it? Don’t you think I’d wanna remember actually pulling it on you? Do you think I’d actually deny it?” Hawkeye responded.  
  
“Well, you’re denying it now, aren’t you?” Unless you’re suggesting Hunnicutt somehow thought all that up and pulled it all off on his own,” Charles continued.  
  
“I can’t deny or confirm anything, and I’m serious about that! I don’t know what happened in here last night. I can only be reasonably sure that none of it was fun for any of us,” Hawkeye retorted.  
  
“Well, I _do_ remember what happened, and even though I can’t easily explain it, I know it wasn’t any kind of trick on mine or Hawkeye’s part,” BJ said. When Charles simply turned away and made no reply, BJ continued, “C’mon, Charles! You saw everything that I did! Do you honestly think Hawk and I could fake something like that?”  
  
“Come to think of it, maybe we should be flattered,” Hawkeye interjected mildly.  
  
“And how do you explain Hawkeye’s disappearance? How the hell do you explain _any_ of it?” BJ continued.  
  
Hawkeye placed a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, Beej. C’mon, let’s get out of here before you and Charles kill each other.”

  


“The nerve of that guy!” BJ continued as soon as they’d exited the Swamp, “I mean, where does he even get the idea?”  
  
Before he could continue his rant, Hawkeye cut him off. “You said it yourself, you can’t explain what you saw, right? Well, neither can Charles.”  
  
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we somehow orchestrated the whole thing, now does it?” BJ responded.  
  
“No, but that’s probably the best explanation he could come up with to make some sense of the whole thing,” Hawkeye continued, “I’m not saying he’s right, but I’m just saying I get why he’s trying to convince himself and anyone who’ll listen that that’s what happened.” He understood the impulse all too well actually, even if that wasn’t the way he was choosing to deal with whatever this whole situation was.  
  
“How can you be so calm about all this all of a sudden?” BJ asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Hawkeye replied, “Resignation, maybe? Or maybe I’ve just had all the crazy I can stand for today.”  
  
“I didn’t think that was a possibility for you,” BJ said, smirking slightly.  
  
“Yeah, well, consider the circumstances,” Hawkeye responded. After a brief pause, he added, “If you had to listen to Colonel Potter talk about werewolves and how you were one, you’d probably have had enough, too.”  
  
Suddenly, he stopped. There were choppers approaching.  
  
“Hawk?” BJ questioned.  
  
Before Hawkeye could respond, the announcement came over the loudspeakers, “Incoming wounded.”  
  
The worst part of any day in this hellhole was the most normal part of this day. It no longer mattered what happened the previous night. It no longer matter that Potter thought Hawkeye was a werewolf, nor did it matter that Hawkeye was maybe starting to believe him just a little bit. It didn’t matter what Hawkeye was, crazy or werewolf or whatever. He was a doctor, and he had work to do and lives to save. The war, unfortunately, stopped for no man… or werewolf.


	5. Chapter 5

It seemed as if this wretched place was finally starting to drive Charles mad. This disturbed him on several levels. First and foremost, he had sworn this place would not defeat him; he was, after all, a Winchester. Secondly, _if_ he must go mad, he would have liked to know what specifically caused the madness. Could it be so simple as all the horrors of the OR, all the insufferable and inane antics of those around him, and the nearly constant and profound homesickness that he tried to mask, all adding up and finally managing to break him?  
  
No, that seemed doubtful. He had endured all of that for long enough already, so it made little sense that it would break him now. So, why now did he seem to be losing his mind? It just didn’t make sense.  
  
Whatever _this_ was...Well, it would pass, and he would never think of it again. He tried not to think of it now, as though he could stop these intrusive thoughts and odd sensations just by ignoring and suppressing them.  
  
Still, he couldn’t deny… Something had been very wrong with him when that round of wounded had come in. Were it anyone else perhaps he could chalk it up to nerves, but he was Charles Emerson Winchester III, and he didn’t get nerves, even if he was about to operate while still recovering from an injured arm. (He hadn’t at all forgotten that stunt, and he would see to it that he had his revenge on Pierce and Hunnicutt just as soon as he could devise the perfect plan for it.)  
  
Whatever condition had befallen him, whatever bizarre episode it was, it had affected his ability to work, and his work was vitally important. Fortunately, he was able to pull through and do what needed to be done, and he did so without having to divulge his possible—if likely (hopefully) temporary—madness to anyone else. Still, he had been afraid; afraid that he was going mad, afraid that he’d be rendered unable to operate, afraid that he would fail, that he would cost them all numerous lives and let his friends down. These were fears he’d sooner choke on than express to anyone, but they were all too real.  
  
The whole place was a place filled with fear, and it had never been clearer to him before then, before now. He had been afraid, and at the same time he had found himself strangely very aware of the feelings of those around him. Other doctors afraid of losing patients as he was, nurses, too, afraid of patients dying in spite of all their hard work, and the patients, dear God, the patients… Less so in the operating room where they were anesthetized, but the ones not yet put under and the ones waiting in triage, they were afraid for their very lives and for the lives of those around them.  
  
This overwhelming horrified energy had never been so apparent before. Just as the reek of blood and sweat had never been so pungent. Something had happened to make Charles acutely, painfully aware of it all in a way he had never been before.  
  
Even now the smell of everything and everyone in the camp was all too apparent. It had rendered the mess tent practically unbearable (and it had been bad enough before!) Strangely, despite his bunkmates and the relative squalor in which they kept the tent, his own quarters were a comfort to him; by all rights, they should have repulsed him, but the scent of organ-rotting swill and dirty laundry were not as off-putting as they should have been when amplified thusly. And if that wasn’t a sign that he was beginning to lose it, Charles didn’t know what was.

 

There was something different about Charles, and Hawkeye suspected he had some idea about what it was. Charles was playing it all close to his chest, all the odd and off-putting things he was almost certainly experiencing, but Hawkeye could tell something was up with him. He knew from experience.  
  
Whenever the wounded came in, whenever they had to operate, Charles was overwhelmed in the same way Hawkeye had been; Hawkeye could sense it. He kept as close an eye on Charles as he could, and he wanted to help him somehow, knowing how hellish it was to take in all those terrible scents and feelings unexpectedly, but there was nothing he could really do.  
  
Hawkeye had given up on coming up with an explanation. He had somehow transmitted whatever had been going on with him to Charles. Maybe he really was a werewolf, and maybe now Charles was too. Hell, he’d bitten him apparently! Or something had at least; just like something had bitten Hawkeye and started this whole mess. It was oddly the explanation that made the most sense, and that was basically why Hawkeye had given up on explanations at that time.  
  
Whatever was going on had changed Charles profoundly (which meant it had changed Hawkeye profoundly as well, which was something he hadn’t considered in any real depth before.) It had changed him down to his most basic elements, and Hawkeye was sure of this because it had changed his scent. Sure, Charles still smelled like Charles, but there was something distinctly different about the way Charles smelled now. So whatever this was that was happening to them both, it caused some sort of physical change as well as a mental one.  
  
Of course, he didn’t mention stuff like that to anyone else; it wouldn’t make any sense to them anyway. Although, he thought it best to mention his concerns—or at least some of them—to BJ, seeing as the guy had to live in small quarters with both him and Charles.  
  
“Have you noticed anything different about Charles lately?” he began, looking around to make sure the man in question wasn’t anywhere within earshot (which if his hearing had gotten sharper like Hawkeye’s had meant he couldn’t be anywhere in or near the mess tent or he’d possibly overhear them.)  
  
“Different?” BJ seemed slightly surprised by the question. “How?”  
  
“I don’t know, just different,” Hawkeye responded, “Kinda… off.”  
  
“Off? No, I hadn’t noticed,” BJ responded, “Why? What’s this about?”  
  
Hawkeye idly sniffed a piece of what was supposed to be meatloaf. “Could be nothing.” It was probably not “nothing”, so he continued, “I just, I’ve got a feeling we should keep an eye on him. There’s something not quite right about the guy ever since what happened the other night, whatever it was that actually happened.”

  


Weeks went by, things that had been weird to Hawkeye before had become normal now. He shouldn’t have expected anything different really; that was how things always seemed to go in this place.  
  
He continued to keep a close eye on Charles when he could. It was clear to him that Charles was going through the same thing he had. Whatever he was now, Charles was that, too.  
  
He considered discussing the matter with Charles, but thus far hadn’t for two reasons. For one, he wasn’t really sure how to approach the subject, least of all with Charles. The whole thing was confusing and hard to put into words, and Hawkeye knew Charles would be an especially skeptical audience. Then, of course, there was reason number two, which was that Charles was still avoiding him, and when he couldn’t do that, he made it clear that he was still mad at Hawkeye. Whenever Hawkeye made any attempts to talk to him, he would brush him off or be highly dismissive.  
  
He couldn’t help but wonder if Charles was blaming him for more than just the bite, if Charles had connected that incident to what was going on with him now. If he had, then that made his anger a bit more justified, Hawkeye supposed. He wondered if something like what had happened to him before would happen to Charles, whatever it was that had happened exactly.  
  
Potter almost certainly thought that it was going to happen. Hawkeye had caught him watching Charles as well. It was probably only a matter of time before he decided to meet with them about the whole “werewolf” thing.  
  
As it turned out, that time came about as soon as Hawkeye predicted it would. Potter found him in the Officer’s club having a few drinks with some of the others after a long day that they were hoping didn’t become a long night.  
  
“Pierce, you got a minute? I’d like to talk with you in private,” the colonel requested.  
  
Hawkeye gave BJ a parting glance before nodding. “Yeah, sure.” He followed the old man outside and then to his office.  
  
Once he had made certain no one but Radar would possibly overhear them, Potter began to speak, “There’s a full moon coming up pretty soon.” He looked at Hawkeye as if Hawkeye was supposed to know what exactly this meant.  
  
“Is there? I had no idea. Then again, I don’t really keep up with that sort of thing usually,” Hawkeye responded, as though Potter were just making small talk. He suspected he knew where the colonel was going with this, but he still found himself trying to stall the inevitable discussion.  
  
Stopping him before he could start rambling, Potter said, “Well, you’re gonna have to start keeping up with it from now on. Anyway, we’ve got to figure out what to do with you and Winchester when the time comes, and I think I’ve come up with a plan.”  
  
“So, you think Charles is a werewolf, too?” Hawkeye asked.  
  
“Well, he was bitten by one, wasn’t he?” The colonel retorted.  
  
“He has been different lately,” Hawkeye admitted.  
  
“Ever since the last full moon, yes,” Potter said, “And I don’t want a repeat of last time, especially not with _two_ of you.”  
  
“So, what you’re telling me is that what happened to me a few weeks ago—”  
  
“On the night of the last full moon,” Potter clarified.  
  
“Yeah, what happened to me then is gonna happen again?” Hawkeye continued, “And it’s gonna happen to Charles, too?”  
  
Last time he had felt like he was losing his mind, and when he had lost control of himself it had been a very frightening and painful experience, not to mention him blacking out and doing God knows what and ending up alone and naked in the middle of nowhere; the idea of going through any of that again made Hawkeye uneasy.  
  
“Well, yes and no,” Potter replied, “You see, last time nobody knew what was going on, so when you changed you didn’t have anybody to help you and you didn’t know how to control yourself, but we can maybe do something about that now.” He paused, then added, “But you’ll still go through the change.”  
  
“At my age? I thought I still had a few more childbearing years left,” Hawkeye quipped.  
  
Potter ignored him. “The point is we can’t have the two of you running wild and endangering yourselves and everyone around you. So, we’re going to have to lock the two of you up until we can get you under control.”  
  
Hawkeye didn’t like the sound of being locked up anywhere and especially not with Charles who was bound to be irate and in rare form, but then again he also didn’t fancy another night he couldn’t remember wherein he might hurt someone and then end up lost again. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Some plan you got there, Colonel.” He paused. “I guess I don’t really have a choice here though, do I?”  
  
“‘Fraid not, son,” Potter replied with clear sympathy.  
  
“How do you plan on getting Charles to play along exactly?” Hawkeye asked.  
  
“I figure we’ll find a way to persuade him, one way or another,” Potter answered, confirming Hawkeye’s suspicion that use of rank-pulling or even outright force were a distinct possibility. 

  


Not long after his discussion with Hawkeye, Potter summoned Charles to his office. He asked Hawkeye to sit in as well, although Hawkeye wasn’t sure why he was needed or what he could really contribute. Maybe given the circumstances Potter just liked it when they were both where he could see them.  
  
“You, eh, wanted to speak with me, Colonel?” Charles said, as he entered Potter’s office. Noticing Hawkeye’s presence, he briefly turned his attentions to him, studying him silently.  
  
“Yes, Major,” Potter replied, “have a seat.” After Charles had taken the seat beside Hawkeye in front of Potter’s desk, the old man continued, “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you in here.”  
  
“I must admit the question had crossed my mind, yes,” Charles said with a hint of sarcasm.  
  
“Well, as you might remember, we had a bit of an incident in this camp several weeks ago involving Captains Pierce and Hunnicutt and yourself. An incident where you sustained an injury, a bite on the arm to be more precise.”  
  
Reminded of the “incident” in question, Charles shot Hawkeye a glare. Returning his attention to Potter, he said, “Of course, sir. How could one forget such an, ah, ‘incident’?”  
  
“And you might’ve noticed things are a little different since then. Maybe you feel different,” Potter continued.  
  
Charles shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure what you mean, Colonel. There’s certainly nothing wrong with me, I assure you.”  
  
“No, of course not,” Potter agreed, “There’s nothing wrong with you.”  
  
“Then, what—?” Charles began again, but Potter cut him off.  
  
“Look, I’m not gonna dance around the subject any longer. You’re a werewolf, Major Winchester.”  
  
“A _what_? Colonel Potter, surely I have misheard you, did you just say—?”  
  
“You heard right. You’re a werewolf,” Potter said, “Pierce is a werewolf, thanks to some forgotten shenanigans in Tokyo, and under the last full moon he bit you, making you a werewolf.”  
  
Charles looked from Hawkeye to Potter before finally sneering, “Very funny, gentlemen. Really? Werewolves? Is this the best you can come up with? Trying to frighten me with fairy tales?”  
  
“Major Winchester,” Potter responded testily, his patience clearly pushed too far, “I don’t take kindly to being mocked, particularly when I’m not in on any joke.”  
  
“Trust me, Charles, he’s serious,” Hawkeye interjected at last.  
  
“And _you_ ,” Charles said sharply, “Why should I believe anything you say?”  
  
“Right, because you still think I somehow smuggled a wild animal into our tent and then feigned ignorance about the whole thing,” Hawkeye scoffed.  
  
“Enough!” Potter bellowed, silencing them. Once he had their attention again, he continued, “Now believe it or don’t believe it, either way we’ve gotta deal with it or we’ll have another situation on our hands just like the last time only worse.” From there, Potter explained his plan for the next full moon to Charles just as he had to Hawkeye.  
  
Once he finished, Charles weakly tried to object. “But, Colonel, surely—”  
  
“That’ll be all, Major Winchester. Dismissed,” Potter commanded sternly.  
  
Assuming the colonel meant both of them, Hawkeye left right behind a clearly flustered and frustrated Charles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really not 100% satisfied with this chapter, but after working on it off and on for a while I figured I needed to just get it posted anyway. Sorry if it isn't great. :/

**Author's Note:**

> First ever fic in this fandom! I guess you could say I'm a little nervous! XD I hope I did alright!


End file.
